Edward in a navy suit, tie, glasses, and his blue fedora, standing in a calm martial arts ready stance in the aisle of an empty trading floor at night, rows of monitors glowing red and blue on both sides.

Saturday, October 17, 2026 | Street Fighter opened in theaters Friday, October 16

Training Mode

Player 1: Edward | Stage: Your Finance Department | Mode: Training

So your AI pilot won (congratulations, and I mean that, mostly). It was also fought in Training Mode, where the dummy stands there with infinite health and never once hits back. I ran interRel for 25 years (1997 to 2022, which is a lot of quarters, and a lot of month-end closes) helping finance teams put planning software to work, and this week the whole site is a 1993 arcade game about beating the dummy versus beating the close.

Switch to Arcade Mode See the opponents
Edward in a navy suit, tie, and blue fedora, kneeling on a tatami mat in a quiet wooden dojo, studying an enormous open binder of accounting printouts, a laptop and a cup of tea beside him.
Training montage. The binder is the opponent.

Select your fighter | 1 player

Edward Roske

Fighting style
Asking Good Questions (a Socratic school, picked up at Shimer College)
Home stage
San Juan, Puerto Rico (previously The Great State of Texas, for 25+ years)
Signature item
Blue fedora. A Roske never removes his fedora in the presence of others.
Unlocks
15 books, an ODTUG Lifetime Achievement Award, and a stage in 50+ countries on all 7 continents (yes, Antarctica too)
  • Essbase First perfect score on the certification exam
  • Questions per minute It's the name of the podcast
  • Fedora retention See the knockout photo below
  • Small talk Introvert, professionally disguised
  • Patience for no Freeze Panes Row 4,000, which column is this?

I founded interRel at 22, ran it for 25 years, and merged it with Keste to help found Argano. These days I build MCP servers for finance, invest in AI companies, run D&D for my sons whenever I can find the time, and get on stages to explain what any of that (well, not the D&D) means for a CFO (with a stat line like that, you'd think I'd win more often, and you'll see below how that's going).

Patch notes

New this week.

Writing and video, newest first, including this week's post on whether your AI pilot is stuck in Training Mode.

Latest Writing

All writing →

Latest Video Briefs

All videos →

Mode select

Your pilot passed. Which mode was it in?

Every serious player spends hours in Training Mode, and they should: it's where you learn the inputs. The trouble starts when someone announces they've won the tournament from inside it. Here's how to tell which mode your AI pilot was actually played in (if you're not sure, it was Training Mode).

Edward in a navy suit and blue fedora, beaming, presenting a laptop on a padded stand in an empty grey simulator room with a glowing grid floor; the laptop shows a rising bar chart with a giant green checkmark.
Training Mode, where I'm undefeated (the dummy has been very cooperative).
Training Mode Arcade Mode
The opponent A tidy sample of 3 months of data that somebody cleaned up for the demo. Your actual general ledger, with 14 years of mapping exceptions and an account named MISC-OTHER-2.
Health Infinite. Reset it whenever you like. One close a month, and the board sees how it went.
Blocking The dummy never blocks. Your users block constantly: they keep the old spreadsheet open next to the AI and believe the spreadsheet.
Round timer Off. 6:40 PM on Day 3 of close, and intercompany still doesn't tie out.
Win screen A green checkmark on slide 14. A number somebody signs.

Before your next pilot, write down what Arcade Mode looks like: a full month of your actual ledger, the skeptical users (especially whoever built the spreadsheet it's replacing), a run during a real close, and the result that ends the pilot in either direction. If the vendor won't fight there, ask them why and write that down too (the longer version is over on the blog).

Here comes a new challenger

Book Edward to keynote.

AI keynotes, executive workshops, and board briefings from a practitioner who ships: MCP servers for enterprise finance, a life run by ten-plus AI agents, and twenty-five years in the Office of the CFO. Keynotes from $15,000. Inquiries answered within one business day.

Book Edward to speak Watch him on stage

Edward's AI agents redesign this site every Saturday. It's the live demo of his most-booked talk, "Your Day, Run by Ten Agents."

50+ Countries
300+ Keynotes
15 Books
8 Speaker awards

Arcade Mode | 6 stages

The ladder every finance team climbs.

Five opponents and a final boss, with a special move, a weakness, and a counter for each (Stage 04 predates AI by several decades and is also a personal grudge).

  1. Stage 01

    The Demo

    Stage: A vendor booth in Las Vegas

    Special move Perfect Dataset. It brought its own data, and its own data has never once been late.

    Weakness Your data.

    Counter Ask it to run on a month of your real ledger, live, while you watch. Most demos have a scheduling conflict that day.

  2. Stage 02

    The Confident Hallucination

    Stage: Any chat window

    Special move Fluent Wrong Number. Quotes your Q3 revenue to 2 decimal places from memory, which is a polite way of saying it made the number up.

    Weakness A source.

    Counter Connect it to the system of record so it reads the number instead of remembering one (that's the whole reason I build MCP servers), and make it show where every figure came from.

  3. Stage 03

    The Eternal Pilot

    Stage: A steering committee, forever

    Special move Phase 2. Whenever it starts to lose, it announces a Phase 2 and the round resets.

    Weakness A kill date.

    Counter Write down, before it starts, the result that ends the pilot in either direction. Then actually look at the calendar.

  4. Stage 04

    The Spreadsheet Without Freeze Panes

    Stage: Somebody shared it with you

    Special move Scroll of Confusion. You're on row 4,000 and the headers left about 3,960 rows ago, so column AF could be anything (revenue, a date, somebody's lunch order, you name it).

    Weakness View, then Freeze Panes.

    Counter View, then Freeze Panes. (This one has nothing to do with AI. It's my personal nemesis, and it's my ladder.)

  5. Stage 05

    Shadow AI

    Stage: An open browser tab

    Special move Paste and Pray. Your analyst pastes the board deck into whichever free chatbot was already open.

    Weakness An approved tool that is easier than the free one.

    Counter Banning it mostly moves it to people's phones, so give them a sanctioned tool that's better than the one they found (and easier to log into, which is usually where these things lose).

Edward in a navy suit lying flat on his back on a boardroom carpet in slapstick defeat, eyes closed, glasses askew, blue fedora still on his head, under a ceiling-high tower of overflowing accounting binders, spreadsheets fluttering through the air.

Stage 06 | Final boss

Month-End Close

Stage: Your finance department, every month

Undefeated since Luca Pacioli wrote down double-entry bookkeeping in 1494.

Special move Day 3 Surprise. Everything ties until the morning it doesn't, and then the reconciliation you skipped in March comes back for you.

Weakness None known.

Counter Nobody has beaten it in 532 years, so the realistic goal is a shorter fight: automate the reconciliations first and the commentary last, and keep a human on every number that leaves the building.

That's me, about 4 seconds into the round (Edward, you had 25 years to study this boss). The fedora stayed on (a Roske never removes his fedora in the presence of others, and that includes binders).

Pause | Move list

4 special moves, available for your event.

These are my talks, with the inputs. The joystick notation is decorative (please don't try it on the speaking page, it's just a normal form, and a nice one).

  1. ↓ ↘ → + P (×10)

    Your Day, Run by Ten Agents

    Keynote | Fireside | Most booked

    My own life runs on 10+ AI agents (calendar, inbox, research, writing, code, and the one rebuilding this website every Saturday at 5AM), and this is the tour of the actual stack, so executives can build the same thing without an engineering degree.

  2. ← (charge) → + K

    Answers to the Questions You've Been Quietly Asking Yourself About AI

    Keynote | Fireside | Offsite opener

    The questions senior leaders won't ask in a meeting because everyone else in the meeting seems to know the answer (they don't), answered from every episode of Asking Good Questions I've recorded so far.

  3. → ↓ ↘ + P

    The Computer-First Finance Department

    Keynote | Workshop pairing | Finance events

    What finance should automate first and what it should never automate at all. This is the one that fights Month-End Close directly, so it pairs nicely with the workshop.

  4. 360° + P

    Building a Company in the Era of AI

    Keynote | PE annual meetings | Board retreats

    A grab move: your product, your pricing, your staffing plan, your org chart, your competition, and probably your board deck are all being re-priced by the same technology at once, and this talk is about what to do when they are. I founded interRel at 22 and ran it for 25 years, so I've redone a plan or two.

See all 4 talks, with fees
Edward in a navy jacket, loose tie, and blue fedora, one fist raised in victory on the stone walls of El Morro in San Juan at sunset, a round sentry box beside him and waves breaking behind.

Previous round | Home stage

The Caribbean AI Summit, cleared.

On October 9 and 10, more than 800 people from 17 countries and 18 US states came to the Puerto Rico Convention Center for the first Caribbean AI Summit, which I co-chaired, and heard 44 speakers across 3 tracks with live captions in English and Spanish. The bonus round happened at 7:30 on Friday morning, when we found out every booth needed its own fire extinguisher, and Dawn drove to Walmart and came back with 6 of them before the fire marshals walked in.

The victory photo on the walls of El Morro is generated (El Morro wasn't on the agenda), but the summit really happened, and the photos below are real. Will there be a 2nd annual Caribbean AI Summit (to make it actually, you know, annual)? You'll just have to stay tuned to find out.

  • 800+People
  • 17Countries
  • 44Speakers
  • 29Hackathon projects
Read the recap
A batucada band in red with a trombone and drums, plus two stilt walkers, greeting attendees as they walk into the Caribbean AI Summit
Day 1: the opening batucada.
Edward in a blue fedora talking with two men in suits beside a screen that reads Opening Keynote 9:00
Me (the fedora) right before the opening keynote.
A large group of volunteers in teal Caribbean AI Summit shirts posing in front of the sponsor wall
The volunteers, who carried the whole game.

Load game | 6 save slots

What I'm building, mid-game.

  • Slot 01 Shipping

    MCP Servers for Enterprise Finance

    Plumbing so an AI reads the real number out of Essbase and Oracle EPM instead of remembering one that sounds about right (the counter to opponent 02, above). Essbase and EPM Planning have shipped, and Financial Close and Consolidations is in beta.

    See how it works
  • Slot 02 Cleared, October 2026

    Caribbean AI Summit

    Co-chaired it on October 9 and 10: 800+ people, 17 countries, 44 speakers, and 6 fire extinguishers Dawn bought at Walmart at 7:30 in the morning. The whole story is on the blog.

    Read the recap
  • Slot 03 Investor

    Caprus

    I'm an investor, and that's the whole job. Lillian Buziak runs it, and they sell and support AgentCube (the MCP servers above), which spares everybody from having me do it.

    Meet the team
  • Slot 04 Cleared, April 2026

    Everest Base Camp

    Two weeks on foot to 18,571 feet with Dawn, which is the closest I've come to an actual endurance round. The trail log is on the blog, including the last 400 feet of Kala Patthar.

    Read the trail log
  • Slot 05 Quiet build

    AI Dungeon Master's Screen

    A prototype screen for running 5e: lore lookups and improvisation help for the person behind the cardboard. It hasn't earned a dollar and it isn't finished, which is about what you'd expect from a project whose main customer is me.

    Not public yet
  • Slot 06 Every other month

    Puerto Rico AI Community

    President of the island's AI community (unpaid, obviously), now past 1,000 different people through the door. Bi-monthly, free, both languages, and the reason the summit exists at all.

    Join the next one

High scores

Spotted elsewhere.

Interviews, mentions, and the occasional post worth keeping, for anyone who'd like proof I leave the dojo now and then.

Insert coin to play in Arcade Mode.

If you've got a room full of finance leaders who'd like to hear what Arcade Mode looks like before they find out the hard way, that's the speaking page (keynotes from $15,000, and nobody has to touch a joystick). If you'd rather just talk, 13 minutes on my calendar is free, or write me at Edward@Roske.AI, which is kinda the same thing.

Book the talk Book 13 minutes Write me

Roske.AI is Edward Roske's personal site. It isn't affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Capcom, Legendary, Paramount, or anyone who makes arcade cabinets. Every image of Edward on this page except the summit photos is AI-generated, and no executives were harmed (one was knocked over by binders).